V. I. Lenin

First Congress of the Communist International

Delivered:March 
	2-6,  1919First Published:(see details at the end of each section); 1920 (in 	
      full)Source:Lenin Collected Works, Volume
      28 (p. 455-477)Transcription\Markup:Brian BagginsOnline Version:Lenin Internet Archive(marxists.org)
      2000

Background
	and Description of the First Congress

Speech at the Opening Session of the Congress

On behalf of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist
      Party I declare the First Congress of the Communist
      International open.  First I would ask all present to rise in
      tribute to the finest representatives of the Third
      International:Karl LiebknechtandRosa Luxemburg.  (All rise.)

Comrades, our gathering has great historic significance.  It
      testifies to the collapse of all the illusions cherished by
      bourgeois democrats.  Not only in Russia, but in the most
      developed capitalist countries of Europe, in Germany for
      example, civil war is a fact.

The bourgeois are terror-stricken at the growing workers’
      revolutionary movement.  This is understandable if we take into
      account that the development of events since the imperialist war
      inevitably favors the workers’ revolutionary movement, and that
      the world revolution is beginning and growing in intensity
      everywhere.

The people are aware of the greatness and significance of the
      struggle now going on. All that is needed is to find the
      practical form to enable the proletariat to establish its rule.
      Such a form is theSoviet
      systemwith the dictatorship of the proletariat.
      Dictatorship of the proletariat—until now these words
      were Latin to the masses.  Thanks to the spread of the Soviets
      throughout the world this Latin has been translated into all
      modern languages; a practical form of dictatorship has been
      found by the working people.  The mass of workers now understand
      it thanks to Soviet power in Russia, thanks to theSpartacus Leaguein Germany and to similar organizations in
      other countries, such as, for example, theShop Stewards Committees in Britain.  All this shows that a
      revolutionary form of the dictatorship of the proletariat has
      been found, that the proletariat is now able to exercise its
      rule.

Comrades, I think that after the events in Russia and the
      January struggle in Germany, it is especially important to note
      that in other countries, too, the latest form of the workers’
      movement is asserting itself and getting the upper hand.  Today,
      for example, I read in an anti-socialist newspaper a report to
      the effect that the British government had received a deputation
      from the Birmingham Workers’ Counsel and had expressed its
      readiness to recognize the Councils as economic bodies.[A]The Soviet
      system has triumphed not only in backward Russia, but also in
      the most developed country of Europe—in Germany, and in
      Britain, the oldest capitalist country.

Even though the bourgeoisie are still raging, even though they
      may kill thousands more workers, victory will be ours, the
      victory of the worldwide Communist revolution is assured.

Comrades, I extend hearty greetings to you on behalf of the
      Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party.  I move that
      we elect a presidium.  Let us  have nominations.[B]

First published in 1920, in German,
      in the book “Der I. Kongress der Kommunistischen
      Internationale. Protokoll” in Petrograd.

      First published in Russian in 1921 in the book “First Congress
      of the Communist International.  Minutes” in Petrograd.

Thesis and Report on Bourgeois Democracy and the Dictatorship of
      the ProletariatMarch 4

1.  Faced with the growth of the revolutionary workers’ movement
      in every country, the bourgeoisie and their agents in the
      workers’ organizations are making desperate attempts to find
      ideological and political arguments in defense of the rule
      of the exploiters.  Condemnation of dictatorship and a sense
      of democracy are particularly prominent among these
      arguments.  The falsity and hypocrisy of this argument,
      repeated in a thousand strains by the capitalist press and
      at theBerne yellow International Conferencein February 1919,
      are obvious to all who refuse to betray the fundamental
      principles of socialism.

2.  Firstly, this argument employs the concepts of
      “democracy in general” and “dictatorship
      in general “, without posing the question of the class
      concerned.  This nonclass or above class presentation, which
      supposedly is popular, is an outright travesty of the basic
      tenet of socialism, namely, its theory of class struggle,
      which Socialists who have sided with the bourgeoisie
      recognize in words but disregard in practice.  For in no
      civilized capitalist country does “democracy in
      general” exist; all that exists is bourgeois
      democracy, and it is not a question of “dictatorship
      in general", but of the dictatorship of the oppressed class,
      i.e., the proletariat, over its oppressors and exploiters,
      i.e., the bourgeoisie, in order to overcome the resistance
      offered by the exploiters in their fight to maintain their
      domination.

3.  History teaches us that no oppressed class ever did, or could, achieve power without going through a period of dictatorship, i.e., the conquest of political power and forceable suppression of the resistance always offered by the exploiters—the resistance that is most desperate, most furious, and that stops at nothing.  The bourgeoisie, whose domination is now defended by the Socialists who denounce “dictatorship in general” and extol “democracy in general", won power in the advanced countries through a series of insurrections, civil wars, and the forcible suppression of kings, feudal lords, slaveowners and their attempts at restoration.  In books, pamphlets, Congress resolutions, and propaganda speeches, Socialists have everywhere thousands and millions of times explained to people the class nature of these bourgeois revolutions and this bourgeois dictatorship.  That is why the present defense of bourgeois democracy under the cover of talk about “democracy in general", and the present howls and shouts against proletarian dictatorship under the cover of shouts about “dictatorship in general", are an outright betrayal of socialism.  They are, in fact, desertion to the bourgeoisie, denial of the proletariat’s right to its own, proletarian revolution, and a defense of bourgeoisreformismat the very historical juncture when bourgeois reformism throughout the world has collapsed and
 the war has created a revolutionary situation.

4.  In explaining the class nature of bourgeois civilization,
 bourgeois democracy and the bourgeois parliamentary system,
 all Socialists have expressed the idea formulated with the
 greatest scientific precision by Marx and Engels[Engels
 Introduction to the The Civil War in France],
 namely, that the most democratic bourgeois republic is no
 more than a machine for the suppression of the working class
 by the bourgeoisie, for the suppression of the working
 people by a handful of capitalists. There is not a single
 revolutionary, not a single Marxist among those now shouting
 against dictatorship and for democracy, who has not sworn
 and vowed to the workers that he excepts this basic truth of
 socialism.  But now, when the revolutionary proletariat is
 in a fighting mood and taking action to destroy this machine
 of oppression and to establish proletarian dictatorship,
 these traitors to socialism claim that the bourgeoisie have
 granted the working people “pure democracy", have abandoned
 resistance and are prepared to yield to the majority of the
 working people.  They assert that in a democratic republic
 there is not, and never has been, any such thing as a state
 machine for the suppression of labor by capital.

5.  TheParis Commune—to which all who parade as
      Socialists pay lip service (for they know that the workers
      ardently and sincerely sympathize with though Commune)
      —showed very clearly the historically conventional
      nature and limited value of the bourgeois parliamentary
      system and bourgeois democracy; institutions which, though
      highly progressive compared with medieval times, inevitably
      require a radical alteration in the era of proletarian
      revolution.  It was Marx who best appraised the historical
      significance of the Commune.In
	his analysis, 

      he revealed the exploiting nature of
      bourgeois democracy in the bourgeois parliamentary system
      under which the oppressed classes enjoy the right to decide
      once in several years which representative of the propertied
      classes shall “represent and suppress” (ver- und
	zertreten) the people in parliament. And it is now,
      when the Soviet movement is embracing the entire world and
      continuing the work of the Commune for all to see, that the
      traitors to socialism are forgetting the concrete experience
      and concrete lessons of the Paris Commune and repeating the
      old bourgeois rubbish about “democracy in general”.  The
      Commune was not a parliamentary institution.

6.  The significance of the commune, furthermore, lies in the
 fact that it endeavored to crush, to smash to its very
 foundations, the bourgeois state apparatus, the
 bureaucratic, judicial, military and police machine, and to
 replace it by a self-governing, mass workers’ organization
 in which there was no division between legislative and
 executive power.  All contemporary bourgeois-democratic
 republic’s, including the German republic—which the
 traitors to socialism, in mockery of the truth, describe as
 a proletarian republic—retain this state apparatus.
 We therefore again get quite clear confirmation of the point
 that shouting in defense of “democracy in general” is
 actually defense of the bourgeoisie and their privileges as
 exploiters.

7.  “Freedom of assembly” can be taken as a sample of the
 requisites of “pure democracy”.  Every class conscience
 worker who has not broken with his class will readily
 appreciate the absurdity of promising freedom of assembly to
 the exploiters at a time and in a situation when the
 exploiters are resisting the overthrow of their rule and are
 fighting to retain their privileges.  When the bourgeoisie
 were revolutionary, they did not, neither in England in 1649
 nor in France in 1793, grant “freedom of assembly” to the
 monarchists and nobles, who summoned foreign troops and
 “assembled” to organize attempts at restoration.  If the
 present day bourgeoisie, who have long since become
 reactionary, demand from proletariat advance guarantees of
 “freedom of assembly” for the exploiters, whatever the
 resistance offered by the capitalists to being expropriated,
 the workers will only laugh at their hypocrisy.

The workers know perfectly well, too, that even in the most
      democratic bourgeois republic “freedom of assembly” is a hollow
      phrase, for the rich have the best public and private buildings
      at their disposal, and enough leisure to assemble at meetings,
      which are protected by the bourgeois machine of power.  The
      rural and urban workers and small peasants—the
      overwhelming majority of the population—are denied all
      these things.  As long as that state of affairs prevails,
      “equality", i.e., “pure democracy", is a fraud.  The first thing
      to do to win genuine equality and enable the working people to
      enjoy democracy in practice is to deprive the exploiters of all
      the public and sumptuous private buildings, to give to the
      working people leisure and to see to it that their freedom of
      assembly is protected by armed workers, not by heirs of the
      nobility or capitalist officers in command of downtrodden
      soldiers.

Only when that change is affected can we speak of freedom of
      assembly and of equality without mocking at the workers, at
      working people in general, at the poor.  And this change can be
      affected only by the vanguard of the working people, the
      proletariat, which overthrows the exploiters, the bourgeoisie.

8.  “Freedom of the press” is another of the principal slogans
      of “pure democracy”.  And here, too, the workers know —
      and Socialists everywhere have explained millions of times
      —that this freedom is a deception because the best
      printing presses and the biggest stocks of paper are
      appropriated by the capitalists, and while capitalist rule
      over the press remains—a rule that is manifested
      throughout the whole world all the more strikingly, sharply
      and cynically—the more democracy and the republican
      system are developed, as in America for example.  The first
      thing to do to win really equality and genuine democracy for
      the working people, for the workers and peasants, is to
      deprive capital of the possibility of hiring writers, buying
      publishing houses and bribing newspapers.  And to do that
      the capitalists and exploiters have to be overthrown and
      their resistance oppressed.  The capitalists have always use
      the term “freedom” to mean freedom for the rich to get
      richer and for the workers to starve to death.  And
      capitalist usage, freedom of the press means freedom of the
      rich to bribe the press, freedom to use their wealth to
      shape and fabricate so-called public opinion.  In this
      respect, too, the defenders of “pure democracy” prove to be
      defenders of an utterly foul and venal system that gives the
      rich control over the mass media.  They prove to be
      deceivers of the people, who, with the aid of plausible,
      fine-sounding, but thoroughly false phrases, divert them
      from the concrete historical task of liberating the press
      from capitalist enslavement.  Genuine freedom and equality
      will be embodied in the system which the Communists are
      building, and in which there will be no opportunity for
      massing wealth at the expense of others, no objective
      opportunities for putting the press under the direct or
      indirect power of money, and no impediments in the way of
      any workingman (or groups of workingman, in any numbers) for
      enjoying and practicing equal rights in the use of public
      printing presses and public stocks of paper.

9.  The history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
 demonstrated, even before the war, what this celebrated
 “pure democracy” really is under capitalism.  Marxists have
 always maintained that the more developed, the “purer"
 democracy is, the more naked, acute and merciless the class
 struggle becomes, and the “purer” the capitalist oppression
 and bourgeois dictatorship.  The Dreyfus case in republican
 France, the massacre of strikers by hired bands armed by the
 capitalists in the free and democratic American republic
—these and thousands of similar facts illustrate the
 truth which the bourgeoisie are mainly seeking to conceal,
 namely, that actually terror and bourgeois dictatorship
 prevail in the most democratic of republics and are openly
 displayed every time the exploiters think the power of
 capital is being shaken.

10.  The imperialist war of 1914-18 conclusively revealed even
  to backward workers the true nature of bourgeois democracy,
  even in the freest republics, as being a dictatorship of
  the bourgeoisie.  Tens of millions were killed for the sake
  of enriching the German or the British group of
  millionaires and multimillionaires, and bourgeois military
  dictatorships were established in the freest republics.
  This military dictatorship continues to exist in the Allied
  countries even after Germany’s defeat.  It was mostly the
  war that opened the eyes of the working people, that
  striped bourgeois democracy of its camouflage and showed
  the people the abyss of speculation and profiteering that
  existed during because of the war.  It was in the name of
  “freedom and equality” that the bourgeoisie wage the war,
  in the name of “freedom and equailty” that the munitions
  manufacturers piled up fabulous fortunes.  Nothing that the
  yellow Berne International does can conceal from the people
  the now thoroughly exposed exploiting character of
  bourgeois freedom, bourgeois equality and bourgeois
  democracy.

11.  In Germany, the most developed capitalist country of
  Continental Europe, the very first months of full
  Republican freedom, establish as a result of imperialist
  Germany’s defeat, have shown the German workers and the
  whole world the true class substance of the
  bourgeois-democratic republic.  The murder of  Karl
  Liebknecht  and Rosa Luxemburg  is an event of epoch-making
  significance not only because of the tragic death of these
  finest people and leaders of the truly proletarian,
  Communist International, but also because the class nature
  of an advanced European state—it can be said without
  exaggeration, of an advanced state, on a worldwide scale
 —has been conclusively exposed.  If those arrested,
  i.e., those placed under state protection, could be
  assassinated by officers and capitalists with impunity, and
  this under the government headed by social patriots, in the
  democratic republic where such a thing was possible is a
  bourgeois dictatorship.  Those who voice their indignation
  at the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg but
  fail to understand this fact are only demonstrating their
  stupidity, or hypocrisy.  “Freedom” in the German republic,
  one of the freest and advanced republics of the world, is
  freedom to murder arrested leaders of the proletariat with
  impunity.  Nor can it be otherwise as long as capitalism
  remains, for the development of democracy sharpens rather
  than dampens the class struggle which, by virtue of all the
  results and influences of the war and of its consequences,
  has been brought to boiling point.

Throughout the civilized world we see Bolsheviks being exiled,
      persecuted and thrown into prison.  This is the case, for
      example, in Switzerland, one of the freest bourgeois republics,
      and in America, where there has been anti-Bolshevik pogroms,
      etc. .  From the standpoint of “democracy in general", or “pure
      democracy", it is really ridiculous that advanced, civilized,
      and democratic countries, which are armed to the teeth, should
      fear the presence of a few score men from backward, famine
      stricken and ruined Russia, which the bourgeois papers, in tens
      of millions of copies, described as savage, criminal, etc..
      Clearly, the social situation that could produce this crying
      contradiction is in fact a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

12.  In these circumstances, proletarian dictatorship is not
  only an absolutely legitimate means of overthrowing
  exploiters and suppressing the resistance, but also
  absolutely necessary to the entire mass of working people,
  being their only defense against the bourgeois dictatorship
  which led to the war and is preparing new wars.

The main thing that Socialists fail to understand—which
      constitutes their shortsightedness in matters of theory, their
      subservience to bourgeois prejudices, and their political
      betrayal of the proletariat—is that in capitalist
      society, whenever there is any serious aggravation of the class
      struggle intrinsic to that society, there can be no alternative
      but the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of
      the proletariat.  Dreams of some third way are reactionary,
      petty-bourgeois limitations.  That is borne out by more than a
      century of development of bourgeois democracy in the
      working-class movement in all the advanced countries, and
      notably by the experience of the past five years.  This is also
      borne out by the whole science of political economy, by the
      entire content of Marxism, which reveals the economic
      inevitability, wherever commodity economy prevails, of the
      dictatorship of the bourgeoisie that can only be replaced by the
      class which the very growth of capitalism develops, multiplies,
      welds together and strengthens; that is, the proletarian class.

13.  Another theoretical and political error of the Socialists
  is their failure to understand that ever since the
  rudiments of democracy first appeared in antiquity, its
  forms notably changed over the centuries as one ruling
  class replaced another.  Democracy assumed different forms
  and was applied in different degrees in the ancient
  republics of Greece, the medieval cities and the advanced
  capitalist countries.  It would be sheer nonsense to think
  that the most profound revolution in human history, the
  first case in the world of power being transferred from the
  exploiting minority to the exploited majority, could take
  place within the time-worn framework of the old, bourgeois,
  parliamentary democracy, without drastic changes, without
  the creation of new forms of democracy, new institutions
  that embody the new conditions for applying democracy, etc.

14.  Proletarian dictatorship is similar to dictatorship of
  other classes in that it arises out of the need, as every
  other dictatorship does, to forcibly suppresses the
  resistance of the class that is losing its political sway.
  The fundamental distinction between the dictatorship of the
  proletariat and a dictatorship of the other classes —
  landlord dictatorship in the Middle Ages and bourgeois
  dictatorship in all civilized capitalist countries —
  consists in the fact that the dictatorship of landowners
  and bourgeoisie was a forcible suppression of the
  resistance offered by the vast majority of the population,
  namely, the working people.  In contrast, proletarian
  dictatorship is a forcible suppression of the resistance of
  the exploiters, i.e., of an insignificant minority the
  population, the landlords and capitalists.

It follows that proletarian dictatorship must inevitably entail
      not only a change in the democratic forms and institutions,
      generally speaking, but precisely such change as provides an
      unparalleled extension of the actual enjoyment of democracy by
      those oppressed by capitalism—the toiling classes.

And indeed, the form of proletarian dictatorship that has
      already taken shape, i.e., Soviet power in Russia, the
      Räte-System in Germany, the Shop Stewards Committees in
      Britain and similar Soviet institutions in other countries, all
      this implies and presents to the toiling classes, i.e., the vast
      majority of the population, greater practical opportunities for
      enjoying democratic rights and liberties than ever existed
      before, even approximately, in the best and the most democratic
      bourgeois republics.

The substance of Soviet government is that the permanent and
      only foundation of state power, the entire machinery of state,
      is the mass scale organization of the classes oppressed by
      capitalism, i.e., the workers and semi-proletarians (peasants
      who do not exploit the labor of others and regularly resort to
      the sale of at least a part of their own labor power).  It is
      the people, who even in the most democratic bourgeois republics,
      while possessing equal rights by law, have in fact been debarred
      by thousands of devices and subterfuges from participation in
      political life and enjoyment of democratic rights and liberties,
      that are now drawn into constant and unfailing, moreover,
      decisive, participation in the democratic administration of the
      state.

15.  The equality of citizens, irrespective of sex, religion,
  race, or nationality, which bourgeois democracy everywhere
  has always promised but never affected, and never could
  affect because of the domination of capital, is given
  immediate and full effect by the Soviet system, or
  dictatorship of the proletariat.  The fact is that this can
  only be done by a government of the workers, who are not
  interested in the means of production being privately owned
  and in the fight for their division and redivision.

16.  The old, i.e., bourgeois, democracy and the parliamentary
  system were so organized that it was the mass of working
  people who were kept farthest away from a machinery of
  government.  Soviet power, i.e., the dictatorship of the
  proletariat, on the other hand, is so organized as to bring
  the working people close to the machinery of government.
  That, too, is the purpose of combining the legislative and
  executive authority under the Soviet organization of the
  state and of replacing territorial constituencies by
  production units—the factory.

17.  The Army was a machine of oppression not only under the
  monarchy.  It remains as such in all bourgeois republics,
  even the most democratic ones.  Only the Soviets, the
  permanent organizations of government authority of the
  classes that were oppressed by capitalism, are in a
  position to destroy the Army’s subordination to bourgeois
  commanders and really merge the proletariat with the Army;
  only the Soviets can effectively arm the proletariat and
  disarm the bourgeoisie.  Unless this is done, the victory
  of socialism is impossible.

18.  The Soviet organization of the state is suited to the
  leading role of the proletariat as a class most
  concentrated and enlightened by capitalism.  The experience
  of all revolutions and all movements of the oppressed
  classes, the experience of the world Socialist movement
  teaches us that only the proletariat is in a position to
  unite and lead the scattered and backward sections of the
  working and exploited population.

19.  Only the Soviet government of the state can really affect
  the immediate breakup and total destruction of the old,
  i.e., bourgeois, bureaucratic and judicial machinery, which
  has been, and has inevitably had to be, retained under
  capitalism even in the most democratic republics, and which
  is, in actual fact, the greatest obstacle to the practical
  implementation of democracy for the workers and working
  people generally.  The Paris Commune took the first epoch
  making step along this path.  The Soviet system has taken
  the second.

20.  Destruction of state power is the aim set by all
  Socialists, including Marx above all.  Genuine democracy,
  i.e., Liberty and equality, is unrealizable unless this aim
  is achieved.  But it’s practical achievement as possible
  only through Soviet, or proletarian, democracy, for by
  enlisting the mass organizations of the working people in
  constant and unfailing participation in the administration
  of the state, it immediately begins to prepare the complete
  withering away of any state.

21.  The complete bankruptcy of the Socialists who assembled in
  Berne, their complete failure to understand the new, i.e.,
  proletarian, democracy, is especially apparent from the
  following.  On February 10, 1919, Branting delivered the
  concluding speech at the International Conference of the
  yellow International in Berne.  In Berlin, on February 11,
  1919,Die
  Freiheit, the paper of the International’s affiliates,
  published an appeal from the party of “Independence” to the
  proletariat.  The appeal acknowledged the bourgeois
  character of the Scheidemann government, rebuked it for
  wanting to abolish the Soviets, which are described asTräger und Schutzer der Revolution—
  vehicles and guardians of the revolution—and
  proposed that the Soviets be legalized, invested with
  government authority and given the right to suspend the
  operation of National Assembly decisions pending a popular
  referendum.

That proposal indicates the complete ideological bankruptcy of
      the theorists who defend democracy and failed to see its
      bourgeois character.  This ludicrous attempt to combine the
      Soviet system, i.e., proletarian dictatorship, with the National
      Assembly, i.e. bourgeois dictatorship, utterly exposes the
      paucity of thought of the yellow Socialists and
      Social-Democrats, theirreactionarypetty-bourgeois political outlook, and their
      cowardly concessions to the irresistible growing strength of the
      new, proletarian democracy.

22.  From a class standpoint, the Berne yellow International
  majority, which did not dare to adopt a formal resolution
  out of fear of the mass of workers, was right in condemning
  Bolshevism.  This majority is in full agreement with the
  Russian Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, and the
  Sheidemanns in Germany.  In complaining of persecution by
  the Bolsheviks, the Russian Mensheviks and Socialist
  revolutionaries try to conceal the fact that they are
  persecuted for participating in the Civil War on the side
  of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.  Similarly, the
  Sheidemanns and their party have already demonstrated in
  Germany that they, too, are participating in the Civil War
  on the side of the bourgeoisie against the workers.

It is therefore quite natural that the Berne yellow
      International majority should be in favor of condemning the
      Bolsheviks.  This was not an expression of defense of “pure
      democracy", but of the self defense of people who know and feel
      that in the Civil War they stand with the bourgeoisie against
      the proletariat.

That is why, from the class point of view, the decision of the
      yellow International majority must be considered correct.  The
      proletariat must not fear the truth, it must face it squarely
      and draw all the necessary political conclusions.

Comrades, I would like to add a word or two to the last two
      points.  I think that the comrades who are to report to us on
      the burn Conference will deal with it in greater detail.

Not a word was said at the Berne Conference about the
      significance of Soviet power.  We in Russia have been discussing
      this question for two years now.  At our Party Conference in
      April 1917, we raised the following question, theoretically and
      politically: “What is Soviet power, what is its substance and
      what is its historical significance?”  We have been discussing
      it for almost two years.  And at our[Seventh]Party Congress we adopted a
      resolution on it.

On February 11 the BerlinDie Freiheitpublished an
      appeal to the German proletariat signed not only by the leaders
      of theIndependent
      Social Democratic Party of Germany, but also by all members
      of the Independent Social Democratic group in theReichstag.
      In August 1918,Kautsky,
      one of the leading theorists of these Independents, wrote a
      pamphlet entitledThe Dictatorship of the Proletariat,in which he declared that he was a supporter of democracyandof Soviet bodies, but that the Soviets must be
      bodies merely of an economic character and that they must not by
      any means be recognized as state organizations.  Kautsky says
      the same thing inDie Freiheitof November 11 and
      January 12.  On February 9, an article appeared by Rudolf
      Hilferding, who is also regarded as one of the leading and
      authoritative theorists of the Second International, in which he
      proposed that the Soviet system be united with the National
      Assembly juridically, by state legislation.  That was on
      February 9.  On February 11 this proposal was adopted by the
      whole of the Independent Party and published in the form of an
      appeal.

There is vacillation again, despite the fact that the National
      Assembly already exists, even after “pure democracy” has been
      embodied in reality, after the leading theorists of the
      Independent Social Democratic Party have declared that the
      Soviet organizations must not be state organizations!  This
      proves that these gentlemen really understand nothing about the
      new movement and about its conditions of struggle.  But it goes
      to prove something else, namely, that there must be conditions,
      causes, for this vacillation!  When, after all these events,
      after nearly two years of victorious revolution in Russia, we
      are offered resolutions like those adopted at the Berne
      Conference, which say nothing about the Soviets and their
      significance, about which not a single delegate uttered a single
      word, we have a perfect right to say that all these gentlemen
      are dead to us as Socialists and theorists.

However, comrades, from the practical side, from the political
      point of view, the fact that these Independents, who in theory
      and on principle have been opposed to these state organizations,
      suddenly making the stupid proposal to “peacefully” unite the
      National Assembly with the Soviet system, i.e., to unite the
      dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with the dictatorship of the
      proletariat, shows that a great change is taking place among the
      masses.  We see that the Independents are all bankrupt in the
      Socialist and theoretical sense and that an enormous change is
      taking place among the masses.  The backward masses among the
      German workers are coming to us, have come to us!  So, the
      significance of the Independent Social Democratic Party of
      Germany, the best section of the Berne Conference, is nil from
      the theoretical and Socialist standpoint.  Still, it has some
      significance, which is that these waverers serve as an index to
      us of the mood of the backward sections of the proletariat.
      This, in my opinion, is a great historical significance of this
      Conference.  We experienced something of the kind in our own
      revolution.  Our Mensheviks traversed almost exactly the same
      path as that of the theorists of the Independents in Germany.
      At first, when they had a majority in the Soviets, they were in
      favor of the Soviets.  All we heard then was: “Long live the
      Soviets!", “For the Soviets!", “The Soviets are revolutionary
      democracy!”  When, however, we Bolsheviks secured a majority in
      the Soviets, they changed their tune; they said: the Soviets
      must not exist side-by-side with the Constituent Assembly.  And
      various Mensheviks theorists made practically the same
      proposals, like the one to unite the Soviet system with the
      Constituent Assembly and to incorporate the Soviets into the
      state structure.  Once again it is here revealed that the
      general course of the proletarian revolution is the same
      throughout the world.  First the spontaneous formation of
      Soviets, then their spread and development, and then the
      appearance of the practical problem: Soviets, or National
      Assembly, or Constituent Assembly, or the bourgeois
      parliamentary system; utter confusion among the leaders, and
      finally—the proletarian revolution.  But I think we
      should not present the problem in this way after nearly two
      years of revolution; we should rather adopt concrete decisions
      because for us, and particularly for the majority of the West
      European countries, spreading of the Soviet system is a most
      important task.

I would like to quote here just one Mensheviks resolution.  I
      asked Comrade Obolensky to translate it into German.  He
      promised to do so but, unfortunately, he is not here.  I shall
      try to render it from memory, as I have not the full text of it
      with me.

It is very difficult for a foreigner who has not heard anything
      about Bolshevism to arrive at an independent opinion about our
      controversial questions.  Everything the Bolsheviks assert is
      challenged by the Mensheviks, and vice versa.  Of course, it
      cannot be otherwise in the middle of the struggle, and that is
      why it is so important that the last Menshevik Party conference,
      held in December 1918, adopted the long and detailed resolution
      published in full in the MenshevikGazeta
      Pechatnikov.  In this resolution the Mensheviks themselves
      briefly outline the history of the class struggle and of the
      Civil War.  The resolution states that they condemn those groups
      in their Party which rallied with the propertied classes in the
      Urals, in the South, in the Crimea and in Georgia—all
      these regions are enumerated.  Those groups of the Menshevik
      party which, in alliance with the propertied classes, fought
      against the Soviets are now condemned in the resolution; but the
      last point of the resolution also condemns those who joined the
      Communists.  It follows that the Mensheviks were compelled to
      admit that there was no unity in their party, and that its
      members were either on the side of the bourgeoisie or on the
      side of the proletariat.  The majority of the Mensheviks went
      over to the bourgeoisie and fought against us during the Civil
      War.  We, of course, persecute Mensheviks, we even shoot them,
      when they wage war against us, fight against our Red Army and
      shoot our Red commanders.  We responded to the bourgeois war
      with the proletarian war—there can be no other way.
      Therefore, from the political point of view, all this is sheer
      Menshevik hypocrisy.  Historically, it is incomprehensible how
      people who have not been officially certified as mad could talk
      at the Berne Conference, on the instructions of the Mensheviks
      and Socialist-Revolutionaries, about the Bolsheviks fighting the
      latter, yet keep silent about their own struggle, in alliance
      with the bourgeoisie, against the proletariat.

All of them furiously attack us for persecuting them.  This is
      true.  But they do not say a word about the part they themselves
      have taken in the Civil War!  I think that I shall have to
      provide the full text of the resolution to be recorded in the
      minutes, and I shall ask the foreign comrades to study it
      because it is a historical document in which the issue is raised
      correctly and which provides excellent material for appraising
      the controversy between the “socialist” trends in Russia.  In
      between the proletariat and bourgeoisie there is another class
      of people, who incline first this way and then the other.  This
      has always been the case in all revolutions, and it is
      absolutely impossible in capitalist society, in which the
      proletariat and bourgeoisie formed to hostile camps, for
      intermediary sections not to exist between them.  The existence
      of these waverers is historically inevitable, and,
      unfortunately, these elements, who do not know themselves on
      whose side they will fight tomorrow, will exist for quite some
      time.

I want to make the practical proposal that a resolution be
      adopted in the which three points shall be specifically
      mentioned.

First:one of the most important tasks confronting
      the West European comrades is to explain to the people the
      meaning, importance and necessity of the Soviet system.  There
      is a sort of misunderstanding on this question.  Although
      Kautsky and Hilferding are bankrupt as theorists, their recent
      articles inDie Freiheitshow that they correctly
      reflect the mood of the backward sections of the German
      proletariat.  The same thing took place in our country: during
      the first eight months of the Russian Revolution the question of
      the Soviet organization was very much discussed, and the workers
      did not understand what the new system was and whether the
      Soviets could be transformed into a state machine.  In our
      revolution we advanced along the path of practice, and not of
      theory.  For example, formally we did not raise the question of
      the Constituent Assembly from the theoretical side, and we did
      not say we did not recognize the Constituent Assembly.  It was
      only later, when the Soviet organizations had spread throughout
      the country and had captured political power, that we decided to
      dissolve the Constituent Assembly.  Now we see that in Hungary
      and Switzerland the question is much more acute.  On the one
      hand, this is very good: it gives us the firm conviction that in
      the West European states the revolution is advancing more
      quickly and will yield great victories.  On the other hand, a
      danger is concealed in it, namely, that the struggle will be so
      precipitous that the minds of the mass of workers will not keep
      pace with this development.  Even now the significance of the
      Soviet system is not clear to a large mass on the politically
      educated German workers, because they have been trained in the
      spirit of the parliamentary system and ingrained withbourgeois prejudices.

Second:About the spread of the Soviet system.  When
      we hear how quickly the idea of Soviets is spreading in Germany,
      and even in Britain, it is very important evidence that the
      proletarian revolution will be victorious.  Its progress can
      only be retarded for a short time.  It is quite another thing,
      however, when Comrades Albert and Platten tell us that in the
      rural districts in their countries there are hardly any Soviets
      among the farm laborers and small peasants.  InDie
      Rote FahneI read in article opposing peasant Soviets, but
      quite properly supporting Soviets of farm laborers and of poor
      peasants.[C]The bourgeoisie and their lackeys, like
      Sheidemann and company, have already issued the slogan of
      peasant Soviets.  All we need, however, is Soviets of farm
      laborers and poor peasants.  Unfortunately, from the reports of
      Comrades Albert, Platten and others, we see that, with the
      exception of Hungary, very little is being done to spread the
      Soviet system in the countryside.  In this, perhaps, lies the
      real and quite serious danger threatening the achievement of
      certain victory by the German proletariat.  Victory can only be
      considered assured when not only the German workers, but also
      the rural proletarians are organized, and organized not as
      before—in trade unions and cooperative societies —
      but in Soviets.  Our victory was made much easier by the fact
      that inOctober
      1917we marched with the peasants, with all the peasants.
      In that sense, our revolution at that time was a bourgeois
      revolution.  The first step taken by our proletarian government
      was to embody in a law promulgated on October 26 (old-style),
      1917, on the next day after the revolution, the old demands of
      all the peasants which peasant Soviets and village assemblies
      had put forward under Kerensky.  That is where our strength lay;
      that is why we were able to win the overwhelming majority so
      easily.  As far as the countryside was concerned, our revolution
      continued to be a bourgeois revolution, and only later, after a
      lapse of six months, were we compelled within the framework of
      the state organization to start the class struggle in the
      countryside, to establish Committees of Poor Peasants, of
      semi-proletarians, in every village, and to carry on a
      methodical fight against the rural bourgeoisie.  This was
      inevitable in Russia owing to the backwardness of the country.
      In Western Europe things will proceed differently, and that is
      why we must emphasize the absolute necessity of spreading the
      Soviet system also to the rural population in proper, perhaps
      new, forms.

Third:we must say that winning a Communist majority
      in the Soviets is the principal task in all countries in which
      Soviet government is not yet victorious.  Our Resolutions’
      Commission discussed this question yesterday.  Perhaps other
      comrades will express their opinion on it; but I would like to
      propose that these three points be adopted as a special
      resolution.  Of course, we are not in a position to prescribe
      the path of development.  It is quite likely that the revolution
      will come very soon in many West-European countries, but we, as
      the organized section of the working-class, as a party, strive
      and must strive to gain majority in the Soviets.  Then our
      victory will be assured and no power on Earth will be able to do
      anything against the Communist revolution.  If we do not,
      victory will not be secured so easily, and it will not be
      durable.  And so, I would like to propose that these three
      points be adopted as a special resolution.

Thesis published March 6, 1919 inPravdaNo.  51;
      report first published in 1920 in the German and in 1921 in the
      Russian additions of the minutes of the First Congress of the
      Communist International.

Resolution to the Thesis on Bourgeois Democracy and the
      Dictatorship of the Proletarian

On the basis of these thesis and the reports made by the
      delegates from the different countries, the Congress of the
      Communist International declares that the chief task of the
      Communist Parties in all countries where Soviet government has
      not yet been established, is as follows:

1) to explain to the broad mass of the workers the historic
         significance and the political and historical necessity of
         the new, proletarian, democracy which must replace bourgeois
         democracy and the parliamentary system;

2) to extend the organization of Soviets among the workers in
         all branches of industry, among the soldiers in the Army and
         the sailors in the Navy and also among farm laborers and poor
         peasants;

3) to build a stable Communist majority inside the Soviets.

PravdaNo.  54, March 11, 1919
      and in the journalCommunist InternationalNo.  1,
      May 1, 1919

Concluding Speech at the Closing Session of the CongressMarch 6

That we have been able to gather, despite all the persecution
      and all the difficulties created by the police, that we have
      been able without any serious differences and in a brief space
      of time, reach important decisions on all the vitally urgent
      questions of the contemporary revolutionary epoch, we owe to the
      fact that the proletarian masses of the whole world, by their
      action, have brought up these questions in practice and begun to
      tackle them.

All we have had to do here has been to record the gains already
      won by the people in the process of their revolutionary
      struggle.

Not only in the East European but also in the West European
      countries, not only in the vanquished but also in the victor
      countries, for example in Britain, the movement in favor of
      Soviets is spreading farther and farther, and this movement is,
      most assuredly, a movement pursuing the aim of establishing the
      new, proletarian democracy.  It is the most significant step
      towards the dictatorship of the proletariat to, towards the
      complete victory of communism.

No matter how the bourgeoisie of the whole world rage, how much
      they deport or jail or even killSpartacistsand Bolsheviks—all this will no longer
      help.  It will only serve to enlighten the masses, help rid them
      of the old bourgeois-democratic prejudices and steel them in the
      struggle.  The victory of the proletarian revolution on a world
      scale is assured.  The founding of an international Soviet
      republic is on the way.  (Stormy Applause.)

First published in 1920 in the German and a 1921 in the Russian
      additions of the minutes of the First Congress of the Communist
      International

[A]Most probably, it is not the Birmingham Workers’ Counsel that is
      meant here, but theshop stewards committee.  It is very likely that the
      newspaper which Lenin read contained incorrect information.
      Speaking at the First Congress of the Communist International on
      March 3, 1919, J. Fineberg, a delegate from the British
      Communist group, said:

“In industrial areas local workers’ committees were formed,
      including representatives of the shop stewards committees, for
      instance, the Clyde workers’ committee, London and Sheffield
      workers’ committees and so on.  The committees served as
      organizational centers and representatives of organized labor
      and localities.  For some time the employers in the government
      refused to recognize the shop stewards committees, but in the
      end they had to enter into negotiations with these unregistered
      committees.  That Lloyd George agreed to recognize the
      Birmingham committee as an economic organization proves the shop
      stewards committees had become permanent factors in the British
      movement.  In the shop stewards committees, workers’ committees
      and national conferences of shop stewards committees we have an
      organization similar to the one forming the basis of the Soviet
      republic"

[B]Lenin was among those who were elected to thepresidium.

[C]Lenin refers to Rosa Luxemburg’s article “Der
      Anfang” (The
	Beginning), published inDie Rote FahneNo. 3,
      November 18, 1918.